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A licensed professional counselor and LPC supervisor, Eduardo Salazar founded a private counseling practice in Northwest Houston in 2005. Five years later, he began serving at Champion Forest Baptist Church as care and counseling pastor. Salazar and his wife, Ashley, have been married more than 26 years and are the parents of four daughters.
What’s one thing you have been able to celebrate through your ministry recently?
We launched Celebrate Recovery last fall under the leadership of our biblical counselor, Scott Riling. CR is a Christ-centered ministry helping people deal with life’s hurts, habits, and hangups. Through CR, we love our community, help people find hope through the gospel, and [facilitate] healing through the transformative power of the Holy Spirit in a support group setting.
What are some of the greatest needs that Christian counseling can help with?
Presence (Matthew 18:20) and prayer (James 5:13-16). In our technologically advanced world, we are increasingly connected online and disconnected in-person. The COVID shutdown brought more division and disunity. Artificial intelligence will bring more independence from others, less personal interaction, more isolation, and increased loneliness. Christian counseling provides one opportunity to meet with another person face to face in a confidential environment. Together we seek God’s truth through His Word (2 Timothy 3:16), prayerfully trusting our spiritual and mental health to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
What are you praying will happen over the next year through your church’s counseling ministry?
Because of the nature of our counseling ministry, much of what we do focuses on making—or more specifically, maturing—disciples and strengthening the church. I pray that over the next year God has His way with our counseling ministry—helps us grow disciples, strengthening our local church and the larger church (the greater kingdom)—as we meet people where they are in their brokenness. I pray we will speak truth in love as the people we counsel find God’s peace, comfort, and hope. I pray those who experience healing become disciple-makers, and in turn help others grow by sharing the life change and spiritual transformation they experience through the gospel.
What’s one thing you have learned to this point of your life and ministry you know you will never forget?
The simplicity and power of the ministry of fellowship and prayer. At Champion Forest we say, “If we know, we go.” As soon as we learn someone from our CF family is hospitalized, our care and counseling ministry leads the charge on visiting them in hospitals all over the Houston area. We remind them God loves and is with them. We pray with them for strength, perseverance, peace, and divine appointments to share their faith in Christ with others as we pray God uses modern medicine to heal them.
How can the churches of the SBTC be praying for you and your ministry?
Pray I would joyfully surrender daily to God’s call to seek Him, love my wife, lead our four daughters, and be made more into the image of Christ as a servant-leader. Pray our care and counseling team would … steward well the favor and influence God has given us to build and maintain relationships with people in our community. Pray that God makes us ready as we guard our hearts and minds against the attacks of the enemy and resist temptation from our flesh. Last, pray we would pick up our cross daily, live in freedom, and [claim] ultimate victory from sin to serve in Jesus’ name.
